Prof. Waller Hastings
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD 57401

LIFE:

MacDonald was born in Huntly, Scotland (near Aberdeen), to a poor family, but nonetheless received a sound education from the excellent Scottish school system of the time.  He attended the University of Aberdeen and received an M.A. in Chemistry and Natural Philosophy (Physics) in 1845.   During one of his vacations, he catalogued the library in an unidentified castle in the north of Scotland, which seems to have been a formative influence on his later reading and writing (Romantic poetry and German literature generally). 

His great-grandfather had been a Catholic Highlander in the Stuart rebellion of 1745, though MacDonald himself was raised in the Calvinist tradition; family tradition celebrated the involvement of his ancestors in the great battles of Glencoe and Culloden.  His grandfather had established a factory, but it was made obsolete by the Industrial Revolution, and his father was a tenant farmer.  His mother died when he was 8 years old; his father was reputedly very kind and generous.

In 1848, he enrolled at a London theological seminary run by the Congregationalists; upon graduation in 1850, he became pastor of a church at Arundel, Sussex, but coexisted uncomfortably with his congregation; he was a reader of German, then suspect because of the Higher Criticism, and something of a mystic, influenced by the poetry of Novalis.  While at Arundel, he contracted TB, further aggravating relations with his flock.  He was finally removed, after three years, on charges of heresy, for speculating that animals as well as humans might make their way into heaven.  MacDonald had come to the conviction early in his education that it was possible for everyone to attain salvation, in contrast to the Calvinist teachings of election that he had grown up with; this view was seen as subversive, which made it difficult for him to find employment as a minister in any 19th-century denomination (Knowles and Malmkjær 164). Thereafter he lived by giving lectures and writing, often experiencing significant poverty (though this was perhaps aggravated by his having 11 children!).  Eventually, he became professor of literature at the University of London and achieved some kind of stable life.

Perhaps because of his own flirtation with poverty, MacDonald was particularly opposed to wealth - condemning Mammon worship wherever possible.  For instance, in one of his sermons he states: “One may readily conclude how poorly God thinks of riches when we see the sort of people he sends them to” (qtd. in Raper, 86-87).

He became friends with Charles Dodgson about the time that Alice in Wonderland was published, and the two between them created a new fantasy tradition in England.  In addition to the shorter fairy tales, most of which were written in the 1860s, he produced three important children’s fantasies: At the Back of the North Wind (1868), The Princess and the Goblin (1871), and The Princess and Curdie (1877).  He also wrote two important adult fantasies, Phantastes (1858) and Lilith (1895),  which strongly influenced C.S. Lewis.

"The Light Princess"

This story was originally told to one of his classes at the University of London in lieu of lecture.  Carpenter calls it “MacDonald’s most cheerful, and therefore least characteristic, fairy story” (Secret Gardens 81).  But it has elements of the Christian myth and the Waste Land/Fisher King mythology that make it more than the light froth it first appears.

In MacDonald’s fairy tales generally, the road to salvation is almost always shared - dual, “male and female protagonists, who learn to follow their deep inclinations, respect each other’s needs and talents, and share each other’s visions” (Zipes, Subversion 105).  In “The Light Princess,” the princess’s primary narrative function is to be rescued; however, even here there is more sensitive interaction between male and female than in traditional tales.  But note that both the prince and the princess are flawed.

Water restores the princess’s sense of gravity (quite the opposite of its “normal” effect); this may raise symbolically the issue of baptism.  Water is also connected to a sense of sorrow and tears.  When she is in the water, both her physical and emotional gravity are mediated, and the prince only loves the princess in the water.  Water is connected to the princess’s self - when the lake dries up, she begins to wither - and without the water, she has no thought for the prince.  Note that when the crisis begins, the “lack of gravity” in seeing nothing seriously is lost from her character - a mark of the metaphysical significance, since it alters her character.

Note that the issue is one of balance - she can’t really laugh properly, either, since “a real hearty laugh requires the incubation of gravity.” The moral defect implicit in the lack of gravity is clarified by her initial joyful reaction to the prince’s voluntary sacrifice.  Knowles and Malmkjær note that the sound of her laughter is increasingly described in unattractive terms as she grows older (167), suggesting that there is a serious side to the loss of gravity, not just a pun or satire.  The princess cannot be healed of her lack of gravity, even though she does become more serious after the water dries up, until she develops the ability to grieve for another human being.

Religious Issues

Note first the spiritual connection between the princess and the lake, in relation to baptism; the mechanism for removing water from the world is a snake (echoing the serpent of Eden) and is complete on the physical and metaphysical planes - it's not just the lake, but all water: even the babies lose their tears.  Here the story turns dangerous - not as light as in the princess’s childhood - and the nasty aunt becomes aligned with EVIL.  

Poetry: The inscription on the plate from the lake makes an implicitly Christian claim that links the sacrifice of the prince to the restoration of life-giving water and also the defeat of the powers of evil that have taken the water away.  The sacrifice must be a living man, who gives himself up voluntarily; and his sacrifice will save the kingdom.  When it comes to the sacrifice itself, the princess must feed him wine and bread, with a suggestion of the communion.

The long poem is a key to understanding MacDonald's theology and his use of water imagery throughout.  It equates love with water in the first two stanzas, and helps to clarify the connection between water and life.

Elements of Humor

Parody: The story unites two “classical”fairy tale beginnings, first parodying “Sleeping Beauty” in the origin of the princess’s affliction, then parodying “The Princess and the Pea” (already something of a parody) in introducing the prince’s quest for a princess worthy of himself.  (However, Knoepflmacher notes that the king in “The Light Princess” has greater moral culpability in forgetting to invite the evil fairy than his counterpart in “Sleeping Beauty,” because she is his sister – and similarly, she has more reason for anger than her counterpart. “MacDonald forces the hero of ‘The Light Princess’ to adopt the comatose posture of a Sleeping Beauty.  Bereft of all mobility, the young man sheepishly begs the lively princess for a ‘long, sweet, cold kiss’ she most grudgingly bestows.  If Sleeping Beauty was awakened by a kiss, this inert prince wants to be lulled into eternal rest.” (18))  There is also a distinct echo of “Four and Twenty Blackbirds.”  The exchange between the princess and the prince is essentially a parody of the genre of sentimental fiction.

Exaggerated characters: The king’s petulance and generally dyspeptic personality has its negative side of course - the king’s insistence that the child “can’t be ours” could lead to a tragic relationship between him and the queen (and as it is they seem to quarrel); the potential is especially great when the queen puns on “light-haired,” which seems to cast aspersions on his potency. The prince exhibits signs of self-pity as he volunteers to make the sacrifice.

Punning: on “gravity,” of course, and the various permutations, good and bad, of “light”; “falling in” to the lake and  falling in love. 

Satire: What truth is there in the princess’s statement that she feels as if she is the only one with any sense?   This introduces Kopy Keck and Hum Drum, the court philosophers, whose debate over the cause and cure of her affliction satirizes “academic” thinkers - note also the wry commentary on methods of schooling and the willingness to experiment even at the cost of the subject’s life.

SOURCES:  Humphrey Carpenter, Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985;  U.C. Knoepflmacher, “Introduction: Literary Fairy Tales and the Value of Impurity,” Marvels & Tales 17, 1 (2003) 15-36; Murray Knowles and Kirsten Malmkjær, Language and Control in Children's Literature, London: Routledge, 1996; Jack Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization, New York: Wildman Press, 1983.

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